How Ebola patients beat airport screenings

How did Thomas Duncan and several other Ebola patients beat airport security? An Atlanta-based infection control specialist, Sean Kaufman, has said that there are ways by which people who contracted Ebola in West Africa could get through airport screenings and onto a plane.

According to him, they could take a lot of ibuprofen to reduce their fever.

His words: “People can take ibuprofen to reduce their fever enough to pass screening, and why wouldn’t they?

“If it will get them on a plane so they can come to the United States and get effective treatment after they’re exposed to Ebola, wouldn’t you do that to save your life?”

Reports said on Thursday that the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in the United States, Thomas Duncan, had lied on a questionnaire at the Monrovia airport about his exposure to an Ebola patient.

And he showed no symptoms of fever when he left Liberia. Fever scans had shown a normal temperature of 97.3 degrees Fahrenheit (36.3 degrees Celsius)

He flew to Brussels and then Dulles airport outside Washington, D.C., before landing in Dallas on September 20.

He therefore could not have been identified through examination as carrying the Ebola virus.

His arrival and hospitalisation in Dallas have underscored how much U.S. authorities are relying on their counterparts in West African countries to screen passengers and contain the worst Ebola outbreak on record.